I have 291 cookbooks and a majority of them I haven’t cooked from. I subscribe to about 20 daily emails of recipes and cooking blogs, which is where I get most of the recipes I make. What is the use of having 291 cookbooks if I am not going to use them? So this is my challenge, to cook at least one recipe a week from a different cookbook until I have used all of my cookbooks. On this blog I will share the one new recipe I make from my cookbooks as well as other recipes I make on a daily basis.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Chicago Style Dogs and Homemade Fries

Phil and I were watching the Sandwich King on the Food Network this morning. Jeff Mauro, the host of the show, went to Gene and Jude's in River Grove, IL. Gene and Jude's is Phil's all time favorite hot dog spot. At Gene and Jude's they make homemade french fries and put them on top of their hot dogs. I do not like hot dogs, I know, crazy right! Jeff also made a bratwurst on his show today, which I really like so I decided to go get ingredients to fill both of our cravings today. There is a German Sausage shop close to where we live that I have been wanting to try, so I went and picked up Brats and Chicago dog ingredients. I decided to feature the dog because, well it looks much more appealing then my brat did.

Chicago dogs require a lot of ingredients sport peppers, Chicago style relish, onion, dill pickle spear, mustard, tomato slices, celery salt. The dog must be Vienna Beef, and the bun should be steamed. Generally the bun is a poppy seed bun, I did not do a poppy seed bun because Gene and Jude's does a regular bun. Gene and Jude dogs only have mustard, relish, onion and sport pepper. Phil did a more traditional dog today and put all the ingredients. One important thing to note is that in order for a hot dog to be considered Chicago is that is must NOT have ketchup on it. A lot of Chicago hot dog stands do not even have ketchup because they consider putting ketchup on a hot dog a cardinal sin. Phil said that the dogs came out as good as any hot dog he has gotten from anywhere around Chicago. We even made homemade fries to top it off and boy were those AMAZING!